Desicional Regeneration?

-Jon Irenicus

Is Spiritual Regeneration decisional? Have we done something that made us Spiritually Regenerated? Can we decide to reject or accept Spiritual Regeneration?

Many Christian preachers today believe and teach that we were Regenerated through faith (I was one of them!). I hear many Christian evangelists today saying, "You must be born-again! Accept Christ as Lord and Savior, and be born-again!" This statement clearly shows that for them, Spiritual Regeneration is decisional, and faith is the prerequisite. For them, Conversion (repentance and faith) is logically prior to Spiritual Regeneration. I was one of them, and I thought that to believe otherwise would be guilty of damnable heresy. But I was wrong. As I read the Scriptures, I began to discover and finally realize that the other way around is the truth.

The Bible clearly teaches that all men are sinners since birth and are Totally Depraved (Rom 3:9-12; Eph 2:1-5). All sinners are spiritually dead because of sin and are incapable of discerning the mysteries of the Gospel (Col 1:13). As spiritually dead people, they don't have any spiritual senses--they are blind and deaf, and unable to respond to the Gospel (Total Depravity is explained here). Unless the totally depraved and spiritually dead sinner is enabled (resurrected) by God, he can never respond to God's call (Read Jn 6:65). Paul said in 1 Cor 2:14,

• The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. 1Co 2:14 (ESV)

Examine the given verse. The "natural person" is an unregenerate individual. The verse clearly says that the unregenerate person is not able to understand the things coming from the Spirit of God (eg, the Gospel). Therefore, a person must be first regenerated before he is able to understand and believe the Gospel. Spiritual Regeneration is not based upon the will of man, but on God's own choice:

• Those who are [born] not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but born of God. Jn 1:13 (LBP)

• He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created. Jas 1:18 (NIV)

By God's great mercy, he has given us new birth:

• Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 1Pe 1:3 (NIV)
  

• It does not, therefore, depend on man's desire or effort, but on God's mercy. Rom 9:16 (NIV)

Spiritual Regeneration is the special enablement of God to the spiritually dead sinner so that he will be receptive to God's call. This new birth is granted to us not because we believed, but granted to us so that WE MAY believe. A rotten, dead person can never see and respond unless he is first resurrected from the dead (Eph 2:4; Col 1:13). The unregenerate person is a sinner whose heart is totally hardened, and unless it is replaced with another heart, he can never turn himself to God:

• And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. Eze 11:19 (Darby)

• And I will give them a heart to have knowledge of me, that I am the Lord: and they will be my people, and I will be their God: for they will come back to me with all their heart Jer 24:7 (BBE)

According to R. C. Sproul,

"The Spirit recreates the human heart, quickening it from spiritual death to spiritual life. Regenerate people are new creations. Where formerly they had no disposition, inclination, or desire for the things of God, now they are disposed and inclined toward God. In regeneration, God plants a desire for himself in the human heart that otherwise would not be there." --R. C. Sproul

In regeneration, the Holy Spirit unites us to Christ independent of any cooperation from our unregenerated human nature. He quickens us through the outward call cast forth by the preaching of His Word, disarms our innate hostility, removes our blindness, illumines our mind, creates understanding, turns our heart of stone to a heart of flesh -- giving rise to a delight in His Word -- all that we might, with our renewed affections, willingly & gladly embrace Christ. The Prophet Ezekiel inspired by the Holy Spirit asserted

• And I will give them a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within them; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and I will give them a heart of flesh, That they may walk in my commandments and keep my ordinances and do them; and they shall be my people, and I will be their God. Ezek 11:19-20 (Lamsa), also 36:26

In Regeneration the word does not work alone but must be accompanied by the "germination" of the Holy Spirit. The Apostle Paul said,

• For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. 1 Thess 1: 4, 5 (ESV).

When a spiritually DEAD sinner is outwardly called through the Gospel, he must be first resurrected (regenerated) before he is able to respond by faith; otherwise, the sinner will blindly reject the Word of God by consistent distrust and disbelief (1 Cor 1:18). Hearing the Gospel, coupled with the Holy Spirit's internal work in the person, would surely result to an effectual, irresistible calling:

Hearing the Gospel (external) + Regeneration (internal) = Effectual Calling/Irresistible Invitation

We are therefore regenerated through the living Word of God:

• for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring Word of God. 1Pe 1:23 (NASB)

The very desire for faith, by which we believe in Him who justifies the ungodly comes to us through regeneration -- and if anyone says that this belongs to us by nature and not by a gift of grace, that is, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit amending our will and turning it from unbelief to faith and from godlessness to godliness, he/she ignores the teaching of the Apostles, for Paul says,

• Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) Eph 2:6 (KJV)

• he saved us. It was not because of any good deeds that we ourselves had done, but because of his own mercy that he saved us, through the Holy Spirit, who gives us new birth and new life by washing us. Tit 3:5 (GNB)

Moreover, If anyone makes the assistance of grace depend on the humility or obedience of man and does not agree that it is a gift of grace itself that we are obedient and humble, he contradicts the Apostle who says,

• For who makes you superior? What do you have that you did not receive?... 1 Cor 4:7 (ISV)

All these truths are in contrast to synergism which the Century Dictionary defines as:

[Synergism is] ...the doctrine that there are two efficient agents in regeneration, namely the human will and the divine Spirit, which, in the strict sense of the term, cooperate. This theory accordingly holds that the soul has not lost in the fall all inclination toward holiness, nor all power to seek for it under the influence of ordinary motives."

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